When people converse about actors/actresses who constitute the major box office draws in America, a few familiar names will pop up. Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, and Will Smith would all find comfortable purchase on that list. One name that may not get batted about is Adam Sandler. Given the abysmal quality of Sandler's last few comedic endeavors, this oversight is entirely justified. However when one investigates the empirical data of box office returns, Sandler is a major driving force. This formidable presence at the box office is made all the more impressive by the slowly dwindling quality of his films.
To highlight his box office might, let’s examine a few of his worst films and their grosses. I’ll start with You Don’t Mess With the Zohan just because I think it is his most insipid and idiotic film since his SNL days. I don’t want to belabor the terribleness so sufficed to say that laughter is in very short supply in this film. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan made over $100 million. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was a pedantic step backwards for tolerance that was about as funny as chewing on carpet samples; $120 million. Anger Management provided sufficient proof that pairing Sandler with a legendary actor still requires a modicum of decent writing lest it turn out to be…Anger Management; a flabbergasting $134 million at the box office.
So what is the moral of this bizarre comedy of errors? Why is it that no matter the caliber of creativity or comedy craftsmanship, people still flock to Adam Sandler films? It is my firm belief that the static nature of Adam Sandler's popularity is a product of the comedy genre's stagnation. When Adam Sandler first began making movies, it was so he could play the same oafish moron he inhabited every week on Saturday Night Live. The thinking was if a small dose of Sandler was good, 90 minutes of his most brainless characters could only be an improvement. I will neither defend a film like Billy Madison nor will I deny that I enjoyed it. But I enjoyed it specifically because I was a prepubescent and, as such, Billy Madison's target demographic.
Where other artists would characterize this experience as a humble beginning, something from which to evolve and grow, Sandler apparently approached it as if he were teaching elementary school. In other words, he evidently decided it made more fiscal sense to practice the same comedy ad nauseum with the knowledge that as one class of easily entertained tykes grows up and moves on, another will perpetually take its place. There is no reason for Sandler to elevate his game when he can simply employ the same dick and fart jokes and squeaky voices to bewitch a new generation of tweens. And the sad thing is this business model turned out to be brilliant.
The climate of comedies today is no small supplement to Sandler’s box office success. Sandler is still bankable because mainstream comedies have not evolved since the 90’s. The Apatow guys came the closest to raising the bar, but any forward progress made by Apatow was all but annihilated by Friedberg and Seltzer (Meet the Spartans). Smart comedies get buried at the box office or released as pseudo-independent films while the IQ of mainstream comedy continues to plummet. So it stands to reason that an actor who made his mark by playing imbecilic characters would continue to appeal to audiences still bombarded by imbecilic comedies.
What would outwardly seem so confounding here are Sandler's accordion-like film choices. He'll do a Paul Thomas Anderson movie full of heartbreak, hubris, and black comedy like Punch Drunk Love and then follow it with Eight Crazy Nights. He would flex his dramatic muscles in the tender, quiet Spanglish and then sign on for The Longest Yard. The guy chased a movie about a man dealing with losing his entire family in the 9/11 attacks (Reign Over Me) with You Don't Mess with the Zohan! Just when you think he is stepping out of himself and doing his best to convince America that both he and his talent have matured, he tumbles back into the same nonsense that audiences expect.
The added benefit here is that he fools audiences into believing the return to silliness is an artist returning to his roots and therefore something to be respected. But when faced with the cold numbers, the more intimate films make peanuts in comparison to the lowbrow fodder. Sandler is no fool, though he plays one on screen, and knows where his bread is buttered.
Below are a list of Adam Sandler's $100M films, sorted by release date.
